Blue Box Five
by Kinners
Summary: The lame title pun tells all! Out of the mysterious box steps an even more mysterious man, who proceeds to whisk a still-grieving Christine on an adventure into the depths of the opera house. But what else lurks in the dark, and what secrets remain to be unveiled in the Phantom's opera? Read on!
1. Why So Silent

Among the bustle of Opening Night, the strange engine was unheard.

Out of the mysterious box came a man at once proper and extravagant. His sweeping tailcoat was of course sleek and shiny black, yet he traipsed around as if he were wearing street or work clothes, having no regard for the welfare of his suit at all. His tall crisp hat identified him as one of the refined upper echelons of society, yet he bounced about and rambled on with the unbefitting excitement of a raggedy schoolboy. He spoke with intelligence and enthusiasm as naturally if they were one and the same, and didn't seem to even recognize the slightest difference of class between any given people. His demeanor and his appearance clashed so overtly that he would befuddle all who met him.

Unless, perhaps, they were too concerned with other matters to wonder at him.

When he found his way backstage he was at least wise enough not to engage anyone in conversation. Everyone was hustling to and fro, herding the dancers to the wings, wrestling with costumes, announcing that the overture was to start in precisely two minutes' time. In fact, he was barely noticed-quite the contrast that was to his reception in the lobby! But down here there were only cast members, and cast members are only concerned with their production. Nobody had any time to stop and chat with the strange fellow amid all the hubbub.

But it just so happened to be that the one person who did was not in the mood for conversation.

Being a venerable bloodhound for the nonconform, his curiosity was inevitably drawn to the one person who just did not seem to fit in. Her angst wasn't entirely out of place, given the scenario of opening night, but her gloominess was. It was one thing to be nervous, but entirely another to be melancholy. Although it was just as coated with makeup as any other choir face, her drooping countenance stuck out to him like a flare. Furrowing his eyebrows and subconsciously jutting out a sizeable chin, he made a beeline for her through the crowd.

It seemed that the closer he got, the more unright she seemed and the stronger his feeling of deja vu became. For a man like him one would think that such a sensation would be common, but not so. Her face wasn't familiar to him, but her expression was. Though her eyes glittered with the contrast of her eyeliner, she refused to cast them upon anything but the ground. Her rouged cheeks seemed out of place when her hands looked so pale and cold. Her expertly stenciled eyebrows proved useless, as her countenance withheld any discernible mien in favor of dreary blankness. Ostensibly she was beautiful and vibrant in her makeup and costume, but he knew better. He had seen it too much.

None of this she comprehended until he spoke.

"Stage fright, eh?"

She started with a greater vitality than would be expected at first glance, but once she saw its owner she relaxed a tad. Against the wall behind her next to a doorjamb was a high-class man in a casual slouch, leaning on a simple cane with green eyes twinkling as if he knew a secret. Mistaking his query for sarcasm or worse, she politely averted her eyes and gave a little curtsy.

"Forgive me, messieur," she mumbled meekly. To her surprise he waved away her apology with a mild scowl.

"None of that, please, I highly doubt I am what you think me to be," he said in explanation. Her brows furrowed in confusion at the uncommon statement. "Unless you're a mind-reader or a really good guesser, the former of which I know is not the case courtesy of my mind-reading abilities and the latter of which, I'm guessing, you're not."

She blinked and tilted her head at him in a complete lack of understanding.

"Pardon, messieur?" she inquired, daring to look at him for want of a clue. He mistook her plea for another attempt at subservience.

"I told you, no apologies!" he reproached again. She gave a small sigh at the repetition. "Or goodbyes, if it comes to that. I hate both of them, giving as much as receiving. I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this, but I know it's for a good reason because _you,_ Mademoiselle…mm, come on, give me a name."

"Um, Gaston?"

"Not just any name, _your_ name! Besides, that's a rubbish name, it better not be yours, I refuse to call you that."

"Christine. Daae."

"Much better! That's a fantastic name! While we're at it, I'm the Doctor, pleased to have met you. Now...erm, where was I?"

"Mademoiselle…?"

"Ah, yes! Because _you,_ Mademoiselle Christine," He emphasized his words with a poke in her general direction. "are someone, or something, special. I don't know exactly what yet, but I know it's very, very…cursed?"

At the strong word caught by his inquisitive ear, his attention was stolen by a little blonde dancer with wide eyes.

"Did you say the opera house was cursed?" he echoed in a deliberately careful tone.

The dancer stepped back and held her hands behind her back shyly, reddening past her makeup at the cries of 'Come on, Meg!' and 'Go on, tell him!' that the other dancers assailed her with. After a long pause, she worked up the nerve to blurt out the taboo knowledge that she gladly gave to anyone but those who would do something about it.

"The opera house is cursed by the Phantom!"

A hushed silence followed a chorus of gasps. To everyone's astonishment, the strange man smiled.

"A ghost?" he inquired wryly. Little Meg nodded furtively. His smile grew into a grin.

"Love me a ghost," he mused, before whirling on a befuddled Christine. "Do you know anything about this Phantom, Christine?"

She shook her head, the look in her eye making it clear that she was beginning to think him a madman.

"Nothing more than anyone else does, messieur," she replied simply. "The Opera Ghost is very mysterious. He may not even be real."

"Lots of things that would rather have you think that they aren't real actually are," he murmured half to himself, his joviality fading for a moment to what could have been fear. A chill ran down Christine's spine. But then he brightened again, turning to the milling ballet girls.

"Don't fret, girls, I assure you that tonight's production will be 100% ghost-free! I'll find the bloke for you, with the help of the wonderful Miss Daae, and then you'll see that there is nothing and no one to be afraid of except, perhaps, me. And, If I'm not mistaken," Here he paused to listen to the airy music wafting in from the stage. "That is the overture and you are all late. Go! Run!"

The troop of dancers stampeded away with assorted shrieks and exclamations, while the Doctor took Christine by the hand and began to lead her away.

"Wait," she hesitated, stopping so suddenly that his hand was pulled from hers. "I'm very sorry, monsieur, but I have a production to put on. I cannot possibly accompany you, and so I must bid you adieu."

"Nonsense!" protested the strange man, his face falling in disappointment and mild confusion. "Don't you want to come with? Why wouldn't you?"

"I have an obligation to perform," she reiterated, sticking her chin up and assuming a manner of semi-polite indifference. "an obligation that far outweighs goose chases after things that may very well not exist. Goodnight."

"Do you?" he asked after she had turned to leave. She paused. "I've seen and been in many performances myself, and I know that a performer's first obligation is to the audience. But is there anybody out there? Anyone who knows your name, who can pick out your voice in the ensemble? Anyone who's waiting for you?"

Christine was silent. Her hands closed in on themselves anxiously as he occupied her mind.

"Perhaps, but you do have a second reason to go on, and that would be your own joy and self-meaning in performing. But do you really have that in you right now? Because I don't see it, and I know you're expecting yourself to just get better if you forge through whatever it is that's blocking you, but that doesn't work. You know this."

His voice had become very quiet and old. She stood stock still.

"If you want to get better, you'll follow me."

She counted his footsteps in their allegro tempo, glaring behind closed eyelids.

"I must be completely mad," she grumbled under her breath as she turned to follow him.

* * *

"Where are you going?"

At the familiar timbre of the indignant voice behind him, the Doctor smiled.

"Anywhere ghosts can be found!"

At the capricious enthusiasm of the figure escaping before her, Christine scowled.

"The Phantom roams the opera house freely," she called after him, rounding a corner and descending some stairs on his trail. "He could be anywhere!"

"A _ha!_ " cried the Doctor, whirling on Christine with an accusatory finger. "So you _do_ know something about it! Him! Ghosty...thing!"

"I said that I know as much about the Phantom of the Opera as anyone else," retorted Christine, hands akimbo. "No more, no less. And why on earth would you want to encounter him?"

"Because that's what I do!" he explained, proceeding down a further corridor as if willing himself to become hopelessly lost. "Christine Daae, you must realize that monsters do exist, and that's what I'm here for!"

Christine stopped dead in her tracks, watching his shrinking form down the hallway with wide eyes.

"Are you saying that he's a monster?" she asked apprehensively.

"Well, perhaps not in the sense that you think," he clarified in a rather ambiguous way, snatching a lantern off a wall as he went. "Do you remember what I said earlier, about things that want you to think they're not real?"

"Yes," she replied before verifying the truth of her statement.

"Then think of this," he prompted, stopping and turning to her to gesticulate through his elucidation. "Those things that don't want you to think they're real, they want that because your imagination conjures up images more terrifying than anything reality would allow for. So whatever you think they are is infinitely more scary than what they really are. Which is why they don't want you to know what or that they really are, because then the jig is up and you know better than to be afraid. Does that make sense?"

"Sort of," she half-truthed, quelling the questions rising within her for fear of being made the fool.

"Good!" he extolled, beaming again. "You're following rather well, given your earlier mood. Whyever were you so despondent in the first place? Opening night, you should be bouncing off the walls with excitement, or…dread, or something."

"It's complicated," she sighed, avoiding his eyes and brushing past him into an unknown section of the opera house. Yet he would not be deterred so easily.

"Not to me, I'm sure," he reasoned, his footsteps following her down the hall. "And anyways, I've got time."

She paused to stare at the wall, cradling her chin and mouth in her hand as she thought of a way to simplify the mess preoccupying her mind. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she finally relented.

"There is a friend," she began, the word tasting wrong in her mouth in description of the one for whom she fretted. "a teacher. He is wonderful, and very dear to me, and every night he comes and gives me lessons...except for tonight."

The Doctor had drawn closer to her, holding up his acquired lantern to peer into her fallen face. When she looked up at him, she saw a remarkable amount of concern written in his furrowed brows and empathetic eyes. They'd only been acquainted for the space of minutes, and yet here he was looking as sympathetic as a friar.

"How long has it been like this?" he asked softly, without a trace of guile. His calm invitation to confidence was nigh-irresistible, especially to a girl who didn't trust anyone else to speak to about this.

"Only about a month," she began, her trickle of volubility soon growing into a torrent. "But he's a wonderful teacher, gentle and kind-most of the time, anyway, sometimes he gets a little cross with me when he thinks I'm being belligerent. And his voice! You've never heard anything like it. Ever since we first met he's always been there for me, guiding and consoling me, and he's there whenever I call him. I know he cares very much for me, so I can't help worrying for him. I don't know where he is this night, or why I haven't heard him. If I didn't know better, I would think that something's gone wrong. I couldn't bear it if-"

"Hey," He took her head in his hand, tilting her chin up so as to force her to look him in the eye. She was taken aback by the age in his emerald gaze, the wisdom that far excelled his youthful face. "Whatever this is, whatever's wrong here, I'll fix it. I promise. Perhaps not the way you would want it, but no matter how things turn out I will do everything in my power to help. In fact, I bet you that I can expose the phantom, find your friend, and cheer you up all in one night!"

"How?" she inquired. Such a tall order seemed nigh-impossible to her, but even now she was beginning to suspect that this man was more than he appeared. Her eyes widened in anticipation of a wonderfully laid-out plan to dispel her fears and right every wrong. She believed in the Doctor.

Instead he held the strangest contraption she'd ever seen up to his face.

"With thi- _hck!_ "


	2. Hide No Longer

Out of nowhere the Doctor's face was yanked into the darkness, the lantern clanging to the floor and extinguishing as the rest of his body followed.

"Doctor?!" exclaimed Christine, frantically feeling for the lantern on the floor. She heard his feet skidding in a panic against the floor a few feet away in the dark, grunting and making strange glottal noises that sounded like strangling. From the darkness kindled two lights like a pair of eyes, glowing a malicious yellow as if they belonged to a cave-dwelling dragon. The Phantom of the Opera. She froze in terror, at a complete loss for what to do to postpone her doom. But what of the Doctor? Was his fate just as certain as hers? Her heart plunged through her bowels in fear, but it jumped to her throat at the unexpected reply that followed.

"Christine?"

The crystal clear voice resounded through her mind like a leaf causing ripples in a still pond. Fear of death forgotten with the arrival of her heavenly cavalry, she exploded with the joy of a rescued castaway.

"Angel of Music!"

There came a lull in the struggle. Her Angel of Music had come not only to her rescue, but to her newfound friend's! Inspired to act by his example, she renewed her search for the lantern and happened upon a magnificent stroke of luck. She rose triumphantly, holding the lantern out expectantly, but cursed her ignorance upon recalling that she had no match. What good is a light without something to light it?

Then two inexplicable things happened almost simultaneously. A bead of glowing green light appeared in the darkness before her at about shoulder level, accompanied by a strange whirring sound. As if of its own accord, the lantern in her hands burst alight. The still-life scene it illuminated before her was one of the most confusing she had ever seen.

The Doctor was leaning backwards, being held back by a noose around his neck that had also caught his hand in a painful- and awkward-looking fashion. Hovering over his shoulder was a death's head that justified the rumors, yet it seemed to be attached to a body, which wore a wide black hat and what appeared to be a draping cloak. With his free hand the Doctor was holding up yet another mechanical oddity that looked vaguely like a tool of some sort, aimed at the lantern. And despite the life-and-death squall that she had just heard, neither Phantom nor Doctor was moving. All they did was stare at her. The Angel was silent. Then the Doctor looked down at the strange device on the ground, which had fallen from his hand after it had been caught by the near-fatal rope.

"Christine, would you be a dear and fetch that for me?" he asked with a flopping hand gesture, as naturally as if he had never been the victim of an attempted murder in his life, let alone moments ago.

"Not until you're free," she demanded, a surge of bravery puffing up her chest. Fearlessly she raised her head and looked the dreaded Phantom right in the eye. "Angel, make him let go!"

"Christine, I can explain-" he began, his hesitance surprising Christine. That gentle voice subtly incited its charm, but she angrily shook it off. Her friend was still within the grasp of a malignant ghost, and she would have none of it. Why was her angel dodging around her request?

"I mean it!" she reiterated, adding more flame to her glare. The ghost looked right back, the death's head expressionless and still. Then the Phantom almost seemed to sigh.

As if by magic, the rope disappeared from around the Doctor's neck like a snake slinking into the dark.

Rather than running from his new foe as she expected, the Doctor turned a perplexed expression upon his captor as soon as he'd uprighted himself, in a show of dangerous curiosity that in hindsight was predictable. In half a tick he took in the dark clothing, the supple stance, and above all the ghastly mask. All the Phantom did was raise his eyebrows behind the mask above eyes that no longer burned.

"Interesting," murmured the Doctor to himself. One of the eyebrows went down. The Doctor extended a hand for an unidentifiable purpose, then hesitated for a moment and gave the Phantom another quizzical look. Then he did something rather random and almost disarming-he poked him.

"What are you doing?" inquired the voice that Christine referred to as Angel. The confused and bordering on indignant face the Phantom regarded him with made it clear that he was asking the same question.

"Nothing, just making sure you're real," mused the Doctor, still half to himself as evidenced by the distant look in his eye. However he promptly reverted to the boisterous self that Christine had been acquainted with, clasping his hands together and rubbing them expectantly. "So! You're the Phantom of the Opera, the, ah, 'Opera Ghost,' so to speak. Splendid, I've heard so much about you and I really can't wait to get to know you better, except, well...you don't seem very ghosty to me, eh, Christine?"

"Leave her out of this!" warned Christine's Angel of Music. The Phantom narrowed his eyes at the Doctor, the dangerous golden glow flaring again. The Doctor was not fazed, looking right back into that heat with an unspoken confidence that was almost intimidating.

"Oh, come now, she can at least answer a question!" retorted the Doctor, still not looking away from the Phantom. "Isn't he though, Christine? I can touch him and everything! Of all the ghosts I've met, you're almost...boring."

"I did try to kill you." pointed out the voice.

" _What?!_ " shrieked Christine. The Phantom flinched at her volume as if from a gunshot, wincing as if he'd made a terrible mistake. The Doctor looked slightly puzzled again, finally turning to look at Christine and her shell-shocked countenance.

"Well, of course he did," he confirmed, putting his hands akimbo like a displeased parent. "Isn't it obvious? Goodness me, sometimes I forget how incorrigibly thick you humans are."

The Phantom suddenly looked thoroughly uncomfortable. He looked at his feet, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly in an undeniably human fashion. Taking a deep breath, he finally looked up at Christine and resolved on crossing his arms across his thin chest.

"As I said before, I can explain everything if you'll let me." repeated the voice. Not taking his eyes off her for one moment, the Phantom took a step towards Christine.

"Not until you make him go away!" she demanded again, spooking backwards from him like a horse from a wolf. Her eyes were as wide as twin full moons, her every muscle poised to run. Still expressionless and looking her dead in the eye, the Phantom lifted a hand in entreaty.

"Don't run from me, my child." beseeched the voice. At the subtle tones her heart's pace began to slow, even though the words didn't make sense. Though she was loath to look, her eyes settled on his. They no longer glowed with an evil-in fact, save the uncanny color, they were perfectly human. Or rather _im_ perfectly. There was an emotion brimming in those eyes that she couldn't place. Though calm, her mind was misted. When she recognized this, she snapped to only to discover with a surge of horror that the Phantom was almost close enough to touch her.

" _Angel!_ " she screamed desperately. She frantically told her legs to move, but with a thrill of terror she found that she was paralyzed. She was completely at the mercy of the Phantom of the Opera. He could kill her, or torture her, or do anything his devious mind desired because she was absolutely powerless to stop him. He came ever closer, a pace careful yet deliberate, not looking away from her for the fleetest glance. He was merciless in his silence, as if waiting for her nonpresent Angel of Music to respond, though with a faux politeness because he knew he never would. Not in time. She was certain her doom was imminent, sweeping in on wings of night to tear her soul to pieces and rip the life out of her and feast on her last screams in a finale of greed…

...except he didn't.

"Yes, Christine?"

Now she couldn't have moved if she wanted to. All she had the willpower to do was stand there in utter shock at the flawless synchronization between her Angel's voice and the Phantom's lips. Blinking in dumbstruck stupor, she reobserved her antagonist in a crusade for anything to explain that what she knew was so could not be. The hand reaching out to her had retracted slightly, fingers softening back to humanity's flesh from the ravishing claws she had imagined. The death's-head visage upon a second glance was revealed to be no more than a mask, casting shadows on his own face that were countered only by those eyes. Aglow with something that could have been called life, she was almost even miffed to find that there was no malice within them at all. Only that same strange, sad emotion that felt like an unresolved cadance with accidentals pulling it into minor.

She didn't feel like she had to run anymore.

"Angel?" she whispered. The Phantom smiled and seemed to relax a little, but that feeling in his night eyes only intensified.

"Yes," he replied breathlessly. Her eyelids fluttered at that voice, trying to stay aware in the moment despite its soothing. "Yes, Christine, that's it, I am your angel."

"Well, which is it?" demanded the Doctor, coming up between them with a look on his face that made it clear he was either completely confused or regarding them both as idiots. "Are you the Phantom of the Opera, or the Angel of Music?"

"Both," he responded cryptically, quite affable towards him despite having tried to kill him only moments earlier. "To most people, you included until further notice, I am the mysterious Phantom of the Opera. But to Christine, I am an Angel of Music, her teacher and general guardian. Quite the same way you are, aren't you, Doctor?"

Christine's befuddled face switched back and forth from the dangerously intent Phantom to the pleasantly surprised Doctor.

"So you know me!" he said cheerfully. The Phantom's face did not change. "Splendid, except of course for the fact that that means-"

"-our timelines have crossed rather awkwardly," finished the Phantom for him, one eyebrow twitching up. Now it was the Doctor's turn to be confused. "Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, even humany-wumany if it comes to that. Yes, I have met you before, but evidently you have never met me."

"What?" muttered Christine to herself. For now both geniuses decided to ignore her confusion, enveloped in their baffling conversation.

"Exactly how much did I tell you?" queried the Doctor. The Phantom even went so far as to smirk.

"I can't rightly tell you that either, can I?" he returned, as if the Doctor should know better.

"Yes, of course, but you seem rather informed."

"I know enough, can't we leave it at that?"

"What? Don't you enjoy it? Surely you don't get a chance to banter very often, your girlfriend's not much use for it, I tried already."

"Girlfriend?" she echoed again. The Phantom thanked his lucky stars his blush was concealed by the mask.

"Forgive me, that's not my reason," he apologized, effectively changing the subject before Christine got it in her to inquire further with her accursed curiosity. "It's simply that whenever you turn up, there's a reason, and undoubtedly a decidedly important one. Shortly put, you have work to do."

"Oh, you really do know me, don't you, you clever boy, you!" praised the Doctor, clapping the Phantom on the back. The Phantom's eyebrows lowered at being called a boy when the Doctor didn't appear much older than Christine. "Pay attention, Christine, this is obviously a seasoned companion, even though that hasn't happened yet for me, which will all be explained as soon as we escape from mortal danger!"

"What danger?" asked Christine suspiciously. The Phantom moved behind her, and ever so slightly closer.

"Oh, I don't know for sure," recanted the Doctor, shrugging unhelpfully. Christine's frustration folded her arms for her. "except for the fact that your Angel's right in the sense that I tend to pop up whenever danger does, sort of like bees, but the opposite. Which is why I have _this!_ "

With that he reached down and picked up that incredible contraption, holding it up triumphantly like the fist of a winning boxer.

"I still don't know what that is," prompted Christine, raising one eyebrow and flattening the other. The Phantom narrowed his eyes as they roved over it, like a seventh grader trying to grasp its first calculus. Commendable for at least attempting to understand, but the only A he could receive would be for effort.

"Thank you for not strangling me this time, Phantom, I appreciate it greatly," he thanked first, before continuing his ramble. "As I was about to explain before I almost died, this nameless doohickey with which you are all fascinated is very vital in the sense that it detects and homes in on nonindigenous bodies of complex carbon structures of considerable size and/or density."

"I should've known you were a scientist," sighed Christine, shaking her head and rubbing her forehead. The Phantom shrank a little as he thought of his own scientific fascinations, but nonetheless decided to put away his shame for the sake of his own pride.

"It detects aliens?" he ventured. Christine narrowed her eyes, yet almost on the brink of making sense of something about this maniacal adventure she had found herself in. The Doctor gave a terrifying grin, eyes pulsing with a light of their own, one that stirred the blood and awakened the senses like a forte-piano crescendo.

"You betcha."


	3. Stranger Than You Dreamt

With that, he pushed the biggest button, flairing his arm out to the side dramatically and holding the device up as if it were about to perform some miraculous task.

It beeped.

"Ooh, Concert F." muttered the Phantom to himself.

It beeped again.

"Really? I thought it was E sharp." replied the Doctor with a quizzical brow.

This time it beeped at the end of his sentence. It was evident that it had assumed a set tempo at a beat per second. At every beep a strange antenna on the end of it flashed yellow at its tip.

"Does it really matter?" snapped Christine. The Phantom rolled his eyes at her naivety, disgusted at the infancy of her musicianship despite his teachings.

"Does it matter whether B is C flat or A double sharp or neither?" he retorted through two and a half beeps. Christine shook her head in exasperation-being that kind of a martinet in terms of music, he could only be the very same voice that had been teaching her for two fortnights. Upon realizing that she felt something odd and cold in her diaphragm, and so decided to put it away for now. The strange device provided apt distraction.

"What did you do?" she inquired, unaware that the Angel had been about to ask that himself.

"Basically nothing, just turned it on," he explained, to the disappointment of the Phantom who had expected a rather lengthy and intricate explanation of the oddity's inner workings. "But when we do this…."

Overdramatizing again, he swayed his free arm out as he turned slowly to the left. The beeps picked up their tempo. Having completed a ninety degree rotation, they had doubled their time.

"That happens," he murmured, voice dropped and smile faded. Sensing the urgency somehow associated with the device's behavior, neither of his companions spoke. Behind her back the Angel drew closer to Christine again. Upon the Doctor repeating the maneuvre, the accelerando occurred again, seeming to match Christine's frantic heartbeat in their panic. She had no idea why she was so scared when she had nothing to be afraid for save her Angel's dire prediction and the Doctor's peculiar behaviour. This kind of fear was unlike any she'd ever experienced, even the kind she had felt when she'd gotten lost in the Opera house for the first time. Something in her core told her that this time there was truly a reason to be fearful, a reason so huge and transcending that she was terrified out of her wits even though she scarcely understood it.

How come she had never felt that before, then?

The beeps became a monotone.

All three of them froze, a still life shot of an uncanny blend betwixt something familiar to human nature and something strange to the human's heart. None could look anyone else in the face, and none could imagine anyone's expression. Every pair of eyes was trained down that hall of darkness where the note echoed into itself.

"We've found it, Doctor, would you mind stopping that noise now?" murmured the Phantom, too entranced by the danger to be as acidic as he intended. The Doctor's reply was even fainter.

"I have."

So horrified she couldn't even gasp, Christine looked to the device and witnessed the antenna's lifeless dull.

"The lantern, Christine?" asked the Doctor in a half-whisper.

In a stupor she obeyed, scarcely comprehending that she was doing anything other than staring down the black corridor. The lantern was taken from her by the hand of the Doctor, stretched backwards behind him and feeling for its handle as his eyes continued their original course. He slowly, carefully brought the light to bear on the shadow immediately before him, casting it back like a wild beast before open flame. Though the light had gone from them, Christine and her Angel dared not move. Not any closer to the occultly cloned sound that reverberated towards them, towards that fiendish thing that made the impossible immaculate in its reality.

Of course, the Doctor had to do the opposite. He stepped forward.

When nothing happened, Christine's heartbeat managed to slow down a tick, calming at least enough for her to be conscious of the events around her. She heard the Phantom exhale softly behind her, his breath warm on her shoulder to her surprise. Emboldened by a lack of negative consequence, or any consequence at all really, the Doctor took another step. More darkness cleared revealed nothing. Realizing the light was a little far for her liking, Christine followed the Doctor until she was in the sphere of illumination, shadowed by her Phantom. Accustomed to the repetition, they expected the next step to be just as mundane at the first. Why, Christine even began to think that maybe there was nothing to be frightened of at all and that they were all totally safe.

I suppose they'd never heard of the old adage about lucky third attempts.

The next footstep taken into the darkness brought to their vision a creature of untold monstrosity. The first thing revealed was a mouth held agape by three jaws, wide enough to engulf a human head with ease and joined between the jaws by a skinlike membrane. Out of this tongueless aperture echoed an exact replica of the sound created by the Doctor's alien detector, shocking even the Phantom with its perfection of pitch. The head from which this mouth protruded was encapsulated around the head proper and the topmost jaw with a smooth white carapace, giving the impression of a skull save for the lack of orifices. The sleek black neck came into view as it took a further step into the light with an equally ebony foot that formlessly pooled on the ground like ink. Another foot soon followed, bringing the front half of its body into the light. Completely obscuring its chest were two giant interlocked growths of bone, appearing as clawed paws guarding some awful morbid secret within its heart. Down its back as it was revealed went what appeared to be a spine, tiny ribs protruding from each vertebrae for a few inches down each side before terminating too soon. The tail that undulated from its rear was thick and almost grossly muscular, sometimes tall and thin in dorsal and ventral areas in an almost finlike structure. If you were either desensitized enough to completely ignore its every oddity or legally blind, it could look like a dog the size of a lion. It was unlike anything Christine had ever hoped to see and far exceeded her most eldritch imaginative powers. Her jaw dropped farther than it would for her darkest sound.

The Phantom, though admittedly stupefied himself, had to suppress a snicker at her reaction.

"There you are, beastie," whispered the Doctor. Although he was only talking to himself everyone heard him on account of their not making a sound. At his vocalization, the creature paused and refixed its muzzle directly up at him, closing its horrendous maw to the relief of Christine especially.

"It heard you," observed the Angel, narrowing his eyes as he took in the creature's anatomy and tried to put the pieces together in his head. Christine was a little farther behind.

"Didn't it see you?" she asked, wondering why that was news.

"Can't very well see me without eyes, can it?" pointed out the Doctor, voice rising in volume a little to match hers. He wasn't moving in the slightest, merely observing the creature even as it observed him, albeit with an entirely different sense that the alien couldn't even comprehend.

"Well, then how did it hear you?" she inquired again, backing up a step when the creature lifted a forepaw and hindpaw as if about to walk. "It doesn't have ears, either."

"Sure it does, five of them in fact!" he contradicted, even smiling a little as he did so. "There's the one it's pointing at me right now and then the ones it walks on. Perfectly good ears, in fact some of the best in the universe."

Christine was so baffled that she couldn't even think of anything intelligent to say.

"In fact it's listening right now," mused the Doctor to himself, tone dulling from the brightness it had undertaken when expounding the alien's mysteries to Christine. "This alien, the soundhound of Locre VII, is a listening machine. It doesn't even comprehend light and dark, they're useless to it in the underground caves of its homeworld, all it knows about the world around it comes from sound. The dead-silent walk, the powers of echolocation, the carapace that acts like a dolphin's melon, every adaptation is fine tuned to one sense and one method of survival. Sound. ...which, conveniently enough, it also uses to hunt."

Finally, the Doctor began backing away. The soundhound followed him, making an odd purring noise that was pleasing despite the knowledge that it meant doom.

"First to lure…"

The unnatural mouth opened again, wider than ever.

"...and then to kill."

Though the moment happened all in a heartbeat, it seemed to tick away in minutes to the Phantom. The alien suddenly inflated so rapidly and grotesquely that it seemed as if it were exploding from the inside, jet black skin stretched to a disturbing limit in its entire torso, tail and neck. Christine startled backwards into him, his arm automatically going over her shoulders as his body involuntarily put itself between her and the soundhound. Then the Phantom noticed the Doctor's face of horror and shock and a thousand other terrible things that struck fear into the very core of man.

He had seen that face before and knew exactly what it meant.

A sensation of falling gripped all of them in the chest, dragging them down into a black abyss. The light that had been with them above was swallowed up by the shadow, replaced by a cold that stole breath even as one tried to find it. All three of them hit the ground at the same moment that a deafening noise halfway between an enraged predator's scream and a thunderclap occurred somewhere above them that was far too close.

For a moment, Christine thought that she had died.

Wordlessly a hand from above took hers and heaved her to her feet, dissolving her theory as it brought her to the approximate level of glowing yellow eyes. If she had died, surely the Phantom would not be in heaven with her. To her surprise she didn't even flinch at the sight of them, but she did feel a pang of yearning for the small illumination they gave when he turned away from her.

That was completely backwards and she knew it. So why didn't it feel that way?

"Don't bother keeping quiet," instructed the Doctor from the darkness, scarcely being heard on account of the ringing in their ears. "It certainly heard the fall, and all the rest of your movements, for that matter. Sound travels much faster through solids than air."

"Then what do we do?" demanded Christine, once more afraid for her life now that she knew it was still occurring.

"We're safe for now," murmured the Phantom, evidently still not convinced of the lack of need to be silent. "the only way it could follow us is-"

Far off in the night an inhuman skull without eyes on the wall was lit in red by an opera house furnace.

"-unless it can climb."

The Doctor was going to add something witty to his next bit of dialogue to keep it from being cliche, but then the soundhound started sprinting.

"Run!"


	4. We Will Play His Game

"This way."

The hand that held her wrist accelerated so suddenly that Christine wondered at it not being pulled right off her arm. An undignified noise to her left made it known to her that the Doctor was experiencing a similar sensation. Just as she got her feet under her at an appropriate rate of footfalls, the Phantom turned and she went wide. Still he refused to let go, dragging her along at that frightful pace to outdistance the danger. Her heart pounded so loud that she scarcely heard the following order:

" _Jump_."

Her heart sprang straight into her throat and blocked a scream when he launched into the air, presumably taking them both with him. Still air and complete dark were her only companions, surrounding and suffocating her. Time cruelly elongated itself in this moment of dreadful suspense, torturing her with the prolonging of her own terror. The hand was slipping away.

She hit the cliff from the waist down and the air was thrust out of her, feet dangling, arms sliding uselessly.

Fingers lashed around her elbow and pulled taut, halting her in midair as her own hand curled around her Angel's arm.

With a second support under her other shoulder she was lifted up as if borne on wings, but once her soles touched the floor she was whisked away once more. Despite her all-encompassing fear she found herself looking behind them at their pursuant. Her wide eyes caught the awful beast freeze-frame in midspring, impossible jaws gaping and elastic paws stretching beyond believability to reach the edge and the prey it sought.

All at once there were two consecutive sudden slamming sounds, and the nightmare image was replaced with her own. Furrowing her brows at herself, she soon deduced that she was in her own dressing room, facing her mirror. Somewhere in her peripheral vision the reflection of the Doctor was busy observing this new place and looking befuddled. The Phantom stood motionless against the mirror they had just entered through, fingers and ear delicately laid against it as if to detect the slightest tremor or imbalance. The others held their breath.

With a slight exhalation, he drew back from it, apparently satisfied.

"There's no other way to get into this room, I checked," he said. At the Phantom's statement, the Doctor incredulously looked from the dressing room door to him. He blinked. "oh. Except for that one."

"Well, then!" exclaimed the Doctor. Christine jumped at his sudden volume, while the Phantom did nothing save turn towards him. "I've succeeded in finding my beastie, _and_ my ghost, funny enough that they weren't the same thing for once, if you'll pardon me, my good Phantom. Now we just need to catch it and send it home!"

The Phantom nodded wordlessly, moving to follow the Doctor, who already had a foot out the door. But one glance at Christine and he was bound in place as if chained. She was shaking, very slightly, so discreetly that she may have only been shaking on the inside. Her lungs expanded but collapsed too fast, accelerating to a pace it couldn't control like a runaway train. She felt like she was melting, her very being so shaken that every atom was coming apart from its neighbors. All this he knew before he understood the fact that he knew.

"Christine, breathe." he commanded in a low soft voice. She swallowed and somehow gathered enough air to speak, in fragments at least.

"I-" She sniffed loudly, trying to repress the sobbing that had started against her will. "I just go-t-scared, that's-that's all. …I'm-fine."

"That doesn't matter. Just breathe." At her first attempt to follow his instruction her lungs balked and expelled their contents too soon, beginning all over the frantic and irregular pattern.

"Come on," he repeated, a hint of ominous displeasure in his tone. This time she managed a whole breath and a half before breaking down again.

"Control your body!" snapped the Angel. By this time the Doctor had noticed that nobody had followed him, and by now had poked his head back inside the doorframe and decided against indignantly inquiring how they hadn't even noticed he was gone. "What, you're telling me that you can belt out _Othello_ above all the other chorus members but you won't breathe properly for your music teacher without a crowd to egg you on? Musicianship must always come before performance! _Breathe_ , Christine!"

Slightly cross at him for being cross with her, Christine did the opposite for a moment. She held her breath for an uncountable moment, as if trying to suffocate the panicking rate of respiration within her. Her Phantom's gaze burned on her face where it reached.

A legato breath poured out of her, followed by a similarly smooth inhalation.

"Very good," praised her Angel, grinning back at her beaming face. "That wasn't so hard, was it? If you could breathe just then, what's to stop you from an adequate lungful for the last eight bars of _Faust?_ Now that I know you can do it, I won't permit you sneaking a breath right before the last note!"

Christine laughed at his mock threat, the noise pealing in the small room like a bell choir. The Doctor was smiling too, even as he and the adoring Phantom drew out of the room. Without even thinking about it she followed suit, and before Christine could even comprehend what she'd done the Phantom whirled on her with fire in his eyes.

"Just what do you think you're doing, young lady?" he demanded, standing between her and the Doctor like a guard dog who didn't growl and was all the more imposing for it.

"Following you," she responded shortly, bringing her eyes back up to his after having cast hers down to avoid them. Seeing his unchanged face she added a supplement to her answer in an attempt to make it more appealing. "and the Doctor."

"Why?" he asked concisely, not a muscle moving save the ones that moved his mouth.

"To catch the alien," answered the Doctor for her, his face-reading proved true by the nod she gave in confirmation. "Why else?"

"Absolutely not." the Angel commanded, not even having to look at the Doctor.

"But you must let me go!" she protested, all at once passionate. The Phantom's jaw clenched. "With that thing running around loose in the Opera Populaire and no one the wiser, who knows who could get hurt? Think of what could happen!"

"I am, which is exactly why my decision stands!" thundered the Phantom, seeming to grow taller and darker as did his tone and volume. "You are not to follow the Doctor and I on this excursion. In fact, you should have been onstage a quarter hour ago. I won't make you go on now if the shame appalls you, but I will require you to either stay here or go home."

" _Phantom_ ," To the Doctor's hand on his shoulder the Phantom only turned his head to look him in the eye. Though the Phantom's eyes sparked like a severed wire the Doctor's gaze was not deterred.

"What did you see, when you last met me?" he asked, voice down a level from the slightly strident one he'd used to gain his initial attention. The Phantom's face changed without moving, and the change frightened him that looked upon it. "What could possibly have happened to make you so paranoid of me? What did I do to you?"

The Phantom was still still. Desperate for a clue the Doctor looked at Christine, at her porcelain visage of curious innocence. She glowed like a moon, one of the perfectly colored ones that reflects the vigor of the sun in a shade that breaks hearts. Dread.

"No, _no_ , Phantom, what did I do to you?"

Turning towards the Phantom again, what the Doctor saw magnified the awful empty apprehension growing in his core. The face behind the mask had changed even more. A thousand emotions that the Doctor longed to recognize roiled in that face like a developing hurricane, all without a single fiber moved. Those eyes spoke everything and nothing, black prophecies howled as if by the wind, and then they turned to Christine.

He had that sad look in his eye again.

"Fine," he murmured clearly, the word so quiet and unexpected that for a moment Christine and the Doctor questioned that they had heard it. "The safest place for Christine to be is with me, so if she must follow you to be there...so be it."

Daring one last look at her, the Angel soundlessly went out the door as if he were a ghost.

* * *

"Doctor, are you dangerous?"

The Doctor smiled a wry smile at Christine's question, feeling the heat of the Phantom's glare on the back of his head like a sniper scope.

"Most people seem to think so, yes," he replied, rather too modestly as he walked along the dark halls. "And as for the ones that don't, they end up thinking so anyway, much like your friend here!"

"Erik."

They came to a set of stairs, but the Phantom pushed in front of the Doctor, holding up a hand for them to stop.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the Doctor asked the Angel eventually, slightly impatiently as he sensed no need for the caution exercised by the Phantom.

"It's my name," replied the Phantom, letting his hand down as if the condition of the stairs pleased him. "You may as well know it, as my ruse is through with. I have you to thank for that, Doctor."

"What ruse?" inquired the Doctor sarcastically, following the newly-named Erik down the stairs. "You didn't really think he was an angel, did you, Christine?"

At the poignant question, Christine paused at the head of the stairs, watching the masked man descend the stairs out of her view.

"I don't know what I think anymore." she replied sadly.

She truly didn't. The Doctor wasn't at all the average if extravagant human she'd thought him, and she wondered if she would ever really know who he was. Despite his wisdom and courtesy, her Angel regarded him as if he were a stray dog found in the street whom a child was begging to keep: with bare tolerance that would shatter the moment threat was perceived. Her Angel, the Phantom. Two half-real entities that had always been completely different in her understanding were now one and the same under the light of truth. Sometimes the way the Phantom acted cemented his claim that he was the Angel of Music, and sometimes it only fed the whisper in her mind that he was a complete stranger who had somehow taken advantage of her. Then there was the thing she'd seen, that they had all seen, which would haunt her nightmares for weeks-she could still scarcely believe it was a real creature. In the space of an hour she had gotten herself into a situation that defied everything she thought she'd known about her world. Christine Daae wished that she would wake up from this dream at any moment and return to reality.

Whereas once the Doctor had shown empathy, he now failed to recognize any of Christine's thoughts and followed the Phantom.

"Remind me where you're taking us?" asked the Doctor, more to give himself an excuse to ignore Christine's status than anything. Likewise, the Phantom replied in a perfunctory fashion.

"Somewhere safe." he responded vaguely.

"You seem to be obsessed with safety," he observed, his tone making it clear that that was not intended as a compliment. The Phantom stopped to give him a look.

"You're here. So is Christine. Use your head."

The Doctor had never been spoken so sarcastically to by anyone except for River Song.

The Phantom kept walking, and after a brief period of stunned silence the Doctor ran after him.

"The way you carry on about me I must have either destroyed your home planet or made you do it!" snapped the Doctor, beginning to anger because this intriguing being was snubbing him. Usually he was the intriguing being, and _he_ never snubbed anyone that wasn't Mickey, so by what right was this Erik bloke too good for him?

"You know me so well, Doctor," snided the Phantom, showing teeth with the force of his satire. Christine had still not gone down the stairs. "Because _I_ care about a single soul in this place! If you caught me on a good day, you wouldn't even have to make me do it!"

"Don't you _dare!_ " snarled the Doctor, pinning Erik to the wall with a hand on his shoulder. Christine began to walk away. "You have no idea what you're talking about! _I_ do! Gallifrey is gone, and it's _my fault!_ "

"All fun and games!" yelled Erik, volume rising as did his temper. Christine couldn't hear him. "Not so great when it's your _own_ life, your _own_ home, is it? You're so high and mighty, must've hurt when you finally _fell!_ "

" _High and mighty?_ " echoed the Doctor in outrage, now with both hands on the Phantom as if he were about to throw him into the other wall. Christine was about to die. "Who's high and mighty? You pretended to be an angel! What's higher than _that?_ "

Erik opened his mouth in a fit of rage, closed it in a pall of horror.

"Christine."


End file.
